Former England all-rounder Moeen Ali has picked Ashish Nehra as the best cricketing brain. Ali recalled that he had the pleasure of working with Nehra when he was associated with Royal Challengers Bengaluru in 2018 and 2019 seasons of the IPL.

Nehra is currently Gujarat Titans’ head coach. The former Indian pacer helped the franchise win the title in IPL 2022 and the franchise ended as the runners-up in the following season.

GT, under the captaincy of Shubman Gill, qualified for the playoffs in the previous edition of the IPL. 

Meanwhile, Ali feels Nehra is spot on while analysing a match situation and knows how he should deal with it.

“For me, a cricketing brain is somebody who knows almost every situation of the game,” Moeen said on Beard Before Wicket. “Someone who’s got an answer—or a theory—for every situation. Like, they just talk about all aspects. ‘Why he’s not that good, why he is good, what should happen in this situation, what could happen’,” he said.

“But he’s got something,” he added. “And behind that something, there’s either data or evidence. Like, ‘It’s happened before, and this happened, and this is why this can happen.’ So the name I am going to give is Ashish Nehra. He is the coach of Gujarat; I had him at RCB for a couple of years. When it comes to cricket brain, this guy knows what he’s talking about. Knows how to get a team environment going, knows how to deal with people, players, and coaches. Amazing, amazing cricket brain.”

Nehra is known to get the best out of his players and his coaching style is a bit different from other coaches. He is mostly seen passing on the information to his players from the boundary ropes, bringing a football-type head coach culture to cricket.